101 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b 12 May 2022 \ on: David Marcus is Launching a Lightning Network Project Called Lightspark bitcoin
David Marcus was leading Diem at Facebook before that got shut down. Very exciting to see someone who could've done a million other things pursuing a Lightning startup.
I'm not sure if he's in stealth or raised money without an idea, but there's literally no information about what they plan on doing other than "diving deep."1
The Block Crypto article explicitly says they aren't interested pursuing stablecoins (which was my first guess given the recent buzz created by Taro):
Lightspark will not focus on building its own stablecoin or cryptocurrency.
They also seem to have a star-studded corporate cast:
In addition to Marcus, other members of the team include James Everingham, who was previously a vice president of engineering at Novi. Christian Catalini, who built Diem with Marcus, will be charged with leading the company's economic and strategy efforts. Robinhood's former chief marketing and communications officer Christina Smedley will lead comms for Lightspark.

Footnotes
  1. https://www.lightspark.com/ ↩
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31 sats \ 1 reply \ @kr OP 12 May 2022
They do have a few open roles on their site that might provide some clues as to what they're building, but seems to be light on details for now.
https://lightspark.zohorecruit.com/jobs/Careers
He has definitely raised money, and brought on a number of top VC funds like A16Z and Paradigm, no valuation or raise details disclosed though.
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110 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 12 May 2022
These were the most suggestive items I found there:
  • Building frameworks to collect and deeply analyze Lightning data for the purposes of solution improvement
  • Extending Lightning via advanced functionality that solves the next wave of complex problems and introduces Lightning to broader audiences
Sounds like they really are just trying to figure out what to work on.
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